Govt seeks ₹1,600 crore to pay EVM sup­pli­ers

The govern­ment has sought over ₹1,637 crore in the cur­rent fis­cal to al­low the Law Min­istry to make pay­ments to two sup­pli­ers of EVMs and paper trail ma­chines ahead of the Lok Sabha elec­tions.

The govern­ment, in the third batch of sup­ple­men­tary de­mands for grants for 2018-19, has sought Par­lia­ment’s ap­proval for ₹1,637.14 crore to al­low the Law Min­istry to pay the Elec­tron­ics Corporation of In­dia Ltd and Bharat Elec­tron­ics Ltd for elec­tronic vot­ing ma­chines and paper trail ma­chines, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment.

The third batch of sup­ple­men­tary de­mands for grants will be passed by Fe­bru­ary 13 when the Bud­get ses­sion con­cludes.

The two pub­lic sec­tor un­der­tak­ings tasked with man­u­fac­tur­ing the lat­est M3 type EVMs, which are to be used in the Lok Sabha elec­tions due this sum­mer, have de­liv­ered the lot com­pris­ing nearly 22.3 lakh bal­lot units and 16.3 lakh con­trol units to the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.

Around 22.3 lakh bal­lot units, 16.3 lakh con­trol units and nearly 17.3 lakh VVPATs or paper trail ma­chines will be used for the 2019 LS polls. The num­ber of ma­chines in­cludes the buf­fer stock for train­ing as well as re­place­ments.